chapter 5- the training

{Ok so quick retcon- apparently Luffy meats Ace and Sabo when he is seven (Ace and Sabo are ten) so I'm changing his age to seven. this will have little to no impact on the story just wanted to be close to the original timeline. other then that you may have noticed that my first chapters all varied in their tone, that was because I am a new writer and I wanted to experiment a little to see where my comfort zone is. but now I think I found it so the tone will be more uniformed. enjoy the chapter}

At dawn, I woke up and started my training program. Last night I made myself a program that will help me get stronger quickly and efficiently, after training my body for a couple of hours I saw Ace finally coming out to hunt. 'well, now the real challenge begins' I thought as I went to ask Ace where he was going. "Where are you going?" I asked him but as expected I got ignored, "you know, I will follow you until you tell me" I tried once again to get an answer from him.

Instead of answering me he just continued walking as if he heard nothing, "fine, be that way, but I'm going with you, now that we are living together we will be best friends. I even forgive you for spitting on me yesterday". Ace continued walking without saying a word, but he did start going through a tough environment trying to lose me.

After a couple of hours of running through the jungle, my body finally gave up, "fine I give up for today but tomorrow I will go with you all the way!" I breathed heavily. Ace just ignored me as I expected, in the past, it took me three months until I finally caught up with him and met Sabo.

'well, guess it's time for me to train', for the rest of the day I trained my haki. since my body was exhausted from the morning training, and I needed a stronger body to really make progress with the gum-gum fruit, so haki was my best choice at the moment.

The next day I woke up at dawn again to train my body, after a couple of hours Ace finally came out and I followed him again. This time though, I managed to follow him further thanks to my conquerors haki. Every time a small animal came towards us I scared it away, it is true that I awakened my conquerors haki two days ago, literally, but I still have the techniques that I mastered over hundreds of years.

I'm not powerful enough to scare big animals like bears away with my conquerors haki though, but I'm not far from it. Unfortunately, I still couldn't follow Ace since he changed his route and started to sabotage me with things like kicking trees and luring beasts toward me. 'Damn he is really stubborn... well its decided, over the next month I will train my body, gum-gum fruit, and my haki so let's see if the bastard can escape me again', with the resolution set I prepared for the intense training I was about to endure over the week.

*next day*

(Ace POV)

'Where is that stupid kid? did he give up? what a shame, I planned how to get rid of him for nothing... well at least I can meet Sabo at a reasonable hour now'

I waited and waited but Sabo didn't show up. Eventually, I saw him coming towards our meetup spot, infuriated I yelled "SABO YOU IDIOT, WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG? I WAITED FOR HOURS".

Sabo didn't take that lying down, however, and retorted with a yell of his own "WELL ARN'T YOU THE GUY WHO COULDN'T GET RID OF SOME BRAT? OF COURSE, I CAME LATE, YOU ALWAYS ARRIVE AROUND THIS TIME". I couldn't deny that he had a point, "*sigh* well the stupid kid gave up so I can meet you here again at the usual time". "Fine, let's go rob Bluejam tomorrow" Sabo said, and after that, I went home.

It was already dinner time and the stupid kid was nowhere to be seen, 'where is he? I'm not going to look for him if he got lost in the jungle'. Just as I was thinking that the door opened, and I saw the brat looking dead tired, covered with scratches and bruises, walk towards the food drooling all over the floor.

Unfortunately, he didn't catch anything and by the rules of the house got only a bowl of rice and some water. 'It's his fault, he should catch something instead of messing around, then he will get food' I thought, trying to ignore his growling stomach. In the end, he went to bed hungry but still slept like a rock.

over the month the kid stopped bothering me completely, in fact, I only saw him coming to Dadan's place looking dead tired and covered with bruises but most surprisingly he didn't come to eat anymore he just went straight to bed. At first, I didn't pay attention to it because he must have realized how weak he was, especially with grandpa coming and beating the hell out of us every now and then.

However, while going to meet with Sabo I noticed the lack of animals that came after us, and sometimes I came across places full of craters and broken tree trunks that could only be described as battlefields.

I told this to Sabo and we are currently trying to figure this out, there is no way that the brat did this considering his strength, and if a monster did this we need to avoid it. but this still didn't stop me and Sabo from getting ourselves some of Bluejam's treasure. and like that a month went by.

"Hey Ace, where are you going?"